


Grand Budapest Hotel

by MarkWShulkin



Category: The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-16
Updated: 2015-01-16
Packaged: 2018-03-07 21:10:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3183275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarkWShulkin/pseuds/MarkWShulkin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A luxury hotel in India survives along with some of it caretakers and is a metaphor for whatever the viewer wants it to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Grand Budapest Hotel

THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL

This is a black comedy about an imaginary land involved in a fictional revolution where the concierge of a run down resort/hotel is accused of murdering a wealthy guest and of stealing a valuable painting. With the help of his Lobby Boy/valet he narrowly escapes the sadism of her vengeful, greedy family. Two of my very dear lady friends asked me to see this movie and to review it. When I asked them what it was about they refused to say, insisting that I see it first. I understood after seeing it that they were aware that it uniquely did not follow the Mythical Journey (Joseph Campbell’s term) for novels., movies,. myths, legends, and stories generally.  
  
In the Mythical Journey something upsets a routine(boy meets girl) followed by a crisis (boy loses girl) which gets even worse before a resolution (meaningful ending). In musicals the ending is always a wedding. Actually this movie is more like a Rorschach in which the meaning depends upon what level the viewer wants to (or is psychologically ready to) experience it. For some it is a wonderful example of an action thriller or a murder mystery with wonderful photography, special effects (a ski and toboggan race that would Gold Medal in any Olympics), acting and casting of Frankenstein- like villains and Snow White innocents, mixed with some X-rated sex and dirty dialogue.

For others it portrays the history of the strife in Europe leading to WWII and the struggle with fascist dictators, Cuba, Iran, Egypt, and Syria, as recent examples but also the history of wars since the beginning of recorded history. As an example, Lobby Boy Zero’s family was destroyed in Holocaust-like fashion before he fled his mythical native country. For others it is also an interesting story about why the super wealthy owner of this luxurious hotel prefers to take a tiny room in the servant’s quarters rather than occupy a luxury suite. If Anderson, the writer/director, had any message in mind he gives it away in the opening scene of a dilapidated cemetery with chaotic tomb stones and a statute of an author decorated with military medals and whose image magically turns into the narrator of the story.

Yes, Virginia this is also a Science Fiction Movie. Like Zero's amorata, Agatha, and Zero, it goes every where from A to Z. M. Gustav, the concierge whose façade of perfection, his representational self, requires using a perfume, Eau du Panache (Eau du flamboyancy?), to distract from his real self which enjoys sleeping with elderly women guests , (and probably men). Yet he is a good human being in his educating and protecting the orphaned Zero while learning something about life from the boy. Gustav is very human in that he is at once irresponsible, ridiculous, poetic, loving, noble and heroic. Aren’t we all?

For me, the movie describes life itself. Perhaps the title is a reference to "The Buddha" and his concern and love for everything in nature. And what a “pest” it is to try to achieve such perfection when life is constantly bombarding us with its slings and arrows. M. Gustav pays a high price for his perfectionism as his real self struggles to consciousness, The obsolescent, past its prime, opulent Budapest Hotel is a nice symbol of the Unconscious. Today it exists only in our dreams, in our creative fantasies, and in our glorified wishes for fame and fortune. In our unconscious, just as Snow White has all the qualities of the seven dwarfs, we are the Lobby Boy Zero, the purist Agatha, the wealthy hotel owner, the honest lawyer, the fascist soldiers, the villainous children of the wealthy hotel guest, and the Frankenstonian family hit man.


End file.
